When to go solid state vs. vacuum?

HI K,

It is all a personal preference...there was a time (less so these days) when tubes were most often associated with beautiful midrange magic...so female jazz vocals, Enya (spaciousness). And SS was associated with tightfisted bass...much less the case these days.

one thing i will say is that SS has less day to day maintenance involved....tubes need replacing every few years and can sometimes requiring periodic re-biasing. Personally, i have used tubes in my system (preamp and digital)...and never regretted it after nearly 15 years straight. But i moved away from Tubed amplification as i wanted more power...but did not want the maintenance of replacing 12+ tubes. (My preamp has only 2 tubes).

So i run Tubed preamp with big SS amp.

As for home theater...i use my system for both...but i remain critical for music only, and simply wish for hometheater to have clarity and good tight bass for explosions, special effects. Tubes are fine for this, providing you have good bass. Today's latest tubed amps are quite powerful in bass and should be fine.

good luck. One man's experience. Feel free to post further questions...

Tube amps are my preference by a wide margin. The best ss amp I owned (Plinius SA-102) was decent, but it failed to convey emotion the way similarly priced tube amps do. All other ss amps I've owned where disappointing (tired models from BAT, Simaudio, YBA, Musical Fidelity, Forte and a few others).

Not sure what your budget is, but a great beginner tube amp is the McIntosh MC-275 (about $3,200 used). Great sound, dependable and power exceeding it's 75 wpc rating.

I suggest you go and listen to a bunch of speakers in your price range and a few above it and a good local dealership. Select the speakers and then select an amp to drive that particular speaker in your particular room and at the volume level that you prefer. You should be able to hear the differences between SS and tubes on a good pair of speakers. Once you have decided on the speakers and know what their requirements are, you may want to ask the question again. But that is how I would start the process. It should be fun so enjoy it.

Yes. Its dependant on your taste in music and of course your ear. I run tube but will be seeking out some ss gear that's more laid back because I'm major OCD and when a output tube goes I flip. Ill keep the tubes because I don't want to miss and regret selling them. There's some ss gear out now that doesn't present that hard edge. I'm holding out to see what the new Ayre AX-5 integrated sounds like and it could be awhile before its on the market.